IDG Contributor Network: Wi-Fi as a service is after the IT department

Wi-Fi as a cloud-based subscription service is making moves to grab enterprise networking. The premise is that Wi-Fi is now so crucial to business and employees that companies have to ensure quality of service—even if that means bypassing the traditional networking and IT folks already on payroll and running networks.“A growing number of companies are deciding that Wi-Fi is too important not to be handled by experts, and for that reason they are outsourcing it,” said RCR Wireless News, which has been writing about managed service provider (MSP) vendor KodaCloud. KodaCloud published a press release this week saying major staffing firm EmployBridge had just bought its subscription Wi-Fi service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple iOS 10.3 beta 1 packs a wallop; iOS 11 rumors heat up

The flashy projected features of the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X?) are dominating the Apple rumor mill of late, but let's not overlook the iOS software on the inside. Developers this week gained access to iOS 10.3 beta 1, even as iOS 11 rumors heated up.If you have an Apple Developer account you can go ahead and grab iOS 10.3 beta 1 now, but if not, here's what developers will be dabbling with (BGR shares the release notes here). The public will gets its chance to experience the new iOS features for iPhones and iPads in the weeks or months to come.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Raspberry Pi roundup: Here comes Google (kinda, probably), Competitor Corner and the sounds of Pi-lence

We in the tech press have a lot to answer for, it has to be admitted, like insufficiently tough coverage of net neutrality regulations, and the word “phablet.” We’ve also gotten into the habit of writing headlines that say “Giant company X has some big news!” based solely on the fact that Giant company X told us “hey, we’re gonna announce some big news Wednesday” or something.This is – kind of – not one of those times, in that Google has actually made a couple semi-specific announcements about its pending entry into the world of makers and maker-related things. Google, apparently, is planning to bring some of its work on machine learning and AI to the Raspberry Pi.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sorting Through SD-WAN

SD-WAN has finally arrived. We’re not longer talking about it in terms of whether or not it is a thing that’s going to happen, but a thing that will happen provided the budgets are right. But while the concept of SD-WAN is certain, one must start to wonder about what’s going to happen to the providers of SD-WAN services.

Any Which Way You Can

I’ve written a lot about SDN and SD-WAN. SD-WAN is the best example of how SDN should be marketed to people. Instead of talking about features like APIs, orchestration, and programmability, you need to focus on the right hook. Do you see a food processor by talking about how many attachments it has? Or do you sell a Swiss Army knife by talking about all the crazy screwdrivers it holds? Or do you simply boil it down to “This thing makes your life easier”?

The most successful companies have made the “easier” pitch the way forward. Throwing a kitchen sink at people doesn’t make them buy a whole kitchen. But showing them how easy and automated you can make installation and management will sell boxes by the truckload. You have to appeal the opposite nature that Continue reading

Cisco’s AppDynamics purchase: A big price tag that could have big dividends

Cisco made some big news earlier this week with the launch of its new Spark Board at its Collaboration Event. Not to be content with one piece of big news, on the same day Cisco announced it had entered an agreement to acquire AppDynamics on the eve of its initial public offering (IPO). The $3.7 billion that Cisco paid was a hefty premium over the $2.0 billion figure put on the IPO. With all the acquisitions Cisco has made, it’s fair to say the company is well experienced in this area. So, it must have seen something interesting in AppDynamics to plunk down that much money for a company that did about $150 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2016. Most of Cisco’s massive war chest is overseas, which is why many of its big price tag purchases have been for companies headquartered outside the U.S., making this even more intriguing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Has Cisco broken out of the network hardware box?

Cisco has for a few years now touted software over its hardware powers but with this week’s AppDynamics buy it may have broken out of its traditional bailiwick for good.That’s because AppDynamics gives Cisco customers a unique, intelligent comprehension of what ‘s going on in their business networks from the infrastructure to applications. It also gives Cisco, which was an AppDynamics customer itself, the ability to help customers keep up with the rapidly-changing environments found in cloud and web-based environments in a way it hasn’t been able to till now.+More on network World: Cisco execs foretell key 2017 enterprise networking trends+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Has Cisco broken out of the network hardware box?

Cisco has for a few years now touted software over its hardware powers but with this week’s AppDynamics buy it may have broken out of its traditional bailiwick for good.That’s because AppDynamics gives Cisco customers a unique, intelligent comprehension of what ‘s going on in their business networks from the infrastructure to applications. It also gives Cisco, which was an AppDynamics customer itself, the ability to help customers keep up with the rapidly-changing environments found in cloud and web-based environments in a way it hasn’t been able to till now.+More on network World: Cisco execs foretell key 2017 enterprise networking trends+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Heating Up the Exascale Race by Staying Cool

High performance computing is a hot field, and not just in the sense that it gets a lot of attention. The hardware necessary to perform the countless simulations performed every day consumes a lot of power, which is largely turned into heat. How to handle all of that heat is a subject that is always on the mind of facilities managers. If the thermal energy is not moved elsewhere in short order, the delicate electronics that comprise the modern computer will cease to function.

The computer room air handler (CRAH) is the usual approach. Chilled water chills the air, which …

Heating Up the Exascale Race by Staying Cool was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Qualcomm CEO slams Apple for ‘without merit’ lawsuits

Senior executives at Qualcomm slammed Apple on Wednesday for lawsuits filed in the last week alleging the smartphone chip-maker significantly overcharged it for licensing fees.The spat saw cases filed last Friday in California and this week in Beijing and were top of mind when Qualcomm conducted an earnings call with analysts on Wednesday.For 15 minutes, Qualcomm executives criticized Apple's moves, calling the two lawsuits "without merit" and accused the iPhone-maker of trying to use them as a way to reduce the royalties the iPhone maker pays to Qualcomm. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top data breach trends in 2016 — Phishing, skimming rise; hacking holds ground

When news broke in December of a massive data breach at Yahoo, it was met with a collective “This, again? Didn’t they just report a breach?” The company had, in fact, reported a record-breaking breach of 500 million user accounts three months earlier, but it was dwarfed by the December breach, which impacted over 1 billion records.That pair of record breaking breaches was a fitting way to cap off a year marked by massive data breaches. As security intelligence provider Risk Based Security (RBS) points out in its newly-released 2016 Data Breach Trends report, “six 2016 breaches have taken their place on the Top 10 List of All Time Largest Breaches.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Top data breach trends in 2016 — Phishing, skimming rise; hacking holds ground

When news broke in December of a massive data breach at Yahoo, it was met with a collective “This, again? Didn’t they just report a breach?” The company had, in fact, reported a record-breaking breach of 500 million user accounts three months earlier, but it was dwarfed by the December breach, which impacted over 1 billion records.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IBM brings Google’s AI tools to its powerful computers

Google has cool technology to recognize images and speech, and IBM's hardware can diagnose diseases and beat humans in Jeopardy.Combine the two, and you get a powerful computer with serious brains.IBM is merging Google's artificial intelligence tools with its own cognitive computing technologies, allowing deep-learning systems to more accurately find answers to complex questions or recognize images or voices.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Artificial intelligence will revolutionize Wi-Fi +Google's open-source TensorFlow machine-learning tools are being packed into IBM's PowerAI, which is a toolkit for computer learning. The two can be combined to improve machine learning on IBM's Power servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

11 ways company politics can thwart your projects

Workplace politics are ultimately types of behaviors or actions injected into business situations that can complicate, impede, or derail progress altogether. Politics and its impact are often underestimated until it's too late. However you can mitigate the risk and the first step is to identify the type and level of political behaviors that might curtail the efforts of a project, program, portfolio, or even an entire organization.Political games can stem from one individual to multiple areas within an organization, and can have a devastating impact. Some forms of politics are blatant and obvious, while others can be more passive and even go completely undetected. The nature and severity of politics can range depending on the level within the organization and motivations, but make no mistake even the most seemingly minor politics can have a far-reaching effect on morale, trust, and the project outcome. Further, the outcome rarely plays out only at the project level, it more often than not has a negative consequence to a business as a whole. Sometimes the effects of political behaviors may not be felt until they snowball and become a larger problem that can jeopardize long-term strategic goals.To read this article in full Continue reading

Self-protection is key to Linux kernel security

Linux has quietly taken over the world. The operating system now powers the large datacenters that make all our cloud applications and services possible, along with billions of Android devices and internet-connected gadgets that comprise the internet of things (IoT). Even the systems that handle the day-to-day operations on the International Space Station run Linux.The fact that Linux is everywhere makes kernel security the highest priority. An issue in the kernel can easily create ripples that are felt by practically everyone. Finding and fixing vulnerabilities in the kernel is only one aspect of Linux security; enabling the kernel to withstand attacks is even more vital.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Self-protection is key to Linux kernel security

Linux has quietly taken over the world. The operating system now powers the large datacenters that make all our cloud applications and services possible, along with billions of Android devices and internet-connected gadgets that comprise the internet of things (IoT). Even the systems that handle the day-to-day operations on the International Space Station run Linux.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

10 frustrating Google Chrome irritations and how to fix them

Chrome may be the most-used browser in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Far from it. Despite receiving over 50 updates over the years, Google’s browser still harbors several rough edges and idiosyncrasies that can make for a less than optimal online experience.A lot of articles show you how to fiddle with the browser in exotic ways. Not this one. Here, we’ll show you how to make Chrome less annoying—and that sweet, serene sanity is worth more than a thousand experimental features.Stop accidental closures Let’s start with something easy. It’s 2017 and Chrome still has no baked-in protection against closing all of your tabs without warning if you accidentally exit the browser.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

13 top Chromebook tools for business

Get your Chromebook ready for workChromebooks aren’t the anomaly in the workplace they used to be. Their easy administration, quick setup, and low learning curve have made them a successful and viable alternative to computers based on Windows or MacOS.For many, the major knock remains that Chromebooks can’t handle more sophisticated tasks given their reliance on web apps. One of Google’s solutions to this is bringing the Play Store to Chromebooks, empowering developers to package their Android apps for Chrome OS. The selection right now is pretty small, but the new Android-on-Chrome capabilities can be effective in the right spots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Huawei plays “The Price Is Right” with Mate 9, Honor 6X (with video)

In some ways, the smartphone business resembles the movie business. The general public knows more about the major releases from big companies because that's what the companies push and the media writes about. But in both the phone and movie industries, there are hundreds of smaller releases targeted at very specific markets -- and if you're not in those markets, you may never hear about them.As a result, the majority of smartphone reviews you'll read about are for top-of-the-line flagship phones selling for roughly $800. It's a little unusual for a manufacturer to make a big deal about phones in the second or third tier of the market. Yet that's just what Huawei is doing with the Mate 9 and Honor 6X, two phones that represent good-to-excellent value but would otherwise not set the world on fire.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft: Upgrade .Net for better garbage collection

Microsoft is encouraging developers to move to the 4.6.2 version of the .Net Framework, so they can benefit from significant changes to the garbage collector, which provides automatic memory management..Net Framework 4.6.2 was released late last summer, but Microsoft is now advising upgrades to take advantage of benefits in object handling. These changes were made in order to improve the framework's performance and to allow the garbage collector to operate more efficiently, Microsoft said. Garbage collection enables developers to build applications without needing to free memory; it also allocates objects on the managed heap and reclaims objects no longer in use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A new service for the less techie criminals

Sketchy charactersImage by ThinkstockYou’ve heard of big business owners like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Warren Buffet. However, did you know there’s a long list of business owners, all of who have access to millions of dollars at their fingertips, that you’ll never hear about. These people are the owners of crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) businesses. For underground cybercriminals, CaaS provides a new dimension to cybercrime by making it more organized, automated and accessible to criminals with limited technical skills. Today, cybercriminals can develop, advertise and sell anything from a botnet to a browser exploit pack or DDoS attack toolkits. Aditya K Sood, director of security and cloud threat labs at Blue Coat Systems, a part of Symantec, details how cybercriminals can obtain sensitive data, like credit card numbers, names and addresses, with just a couple of clicks and a payment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here